The Northwind is a personal website and blog for the exploration of the personal interests, the adventures, the successes, and the trials of its author. You'll find subjects from history, politics, and activism to technology, media, and video games.

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Jul 18 Pushing Tweets

Since it’s launch I’ve been a Tweetbot user. I had previously used the official Twitter app and had no real complaints. Tweetbot won me over with it’s aesthetic and ergonomic superiority, however slim that might be it is a beautiful app and a joy to use. However I lost one major feature: push notifications.
At first, this was probably top of my future implementations wish-list. I think it’s probably the developer’s most requested feature, understandably people like to know when there’s a message for them, be it an @reply or a DM. However, the longer I’ve gone without this feature, the less I miss it. Twitter is something of a passive broadcasting medium for me. Except for some rare occasions I don’t post anything on there that I particularly expect a reply to. It doesn’t require participation from people that follow me in an active sense to serve it’s purpose. I do love the conversations that happen, but the lack of push has reminded me that these conversations are almost passive too. Like e-mail, they wait for me to get around to them. I get around to them frequently enough.

Anybody who is likely to have a reason to contact me as a matter of urgency has the appropriate method at their disposal. I can be reached by actual text message, or if it needs immediate attention I can supposedly recieve telephone calls (though this doesn’t happen often, this thing should be called an i3G rather than an iPhone). Twitter, in this respect, feels far more in it’s place than it used to.